Local Supersymmetry in One-Loop Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The contribution of physical degrees of freedom to the one-loop amplitudes of Euclidean supergravity is here evaluated in the case of flat Euclidean backgrounds bounded by a three-sphere, recently considered in perturbative quantum cosmology. The physical degrees of freedom (denoted by PDF) are picked out by imposing the supersymmetry constraints and choosing a gauge condition. Remarkably, for the massless gravitino field the PDF method and local boundary conditions lead to a result for the trace anomaly which is equal to the PDF value one obtains using spectral boundary conditions on a 3-sphere.Comment: 23 pages, plain-tex, recently appearing in Int. J. Mod. Phys. D, volume 3, pages 593-607, September 1994. The Author would like to apologize for the delay in circulating the paper, due to technical problems now fixe